LOVE MY WAY

Feb. 9, 2007
Robin Plan
"Robin Lee Oswald----Is the chat room your invention? Are you happy with it? Is there a kind of sameness to all chat rooms?" Yes, the site is my invention, but no I don't think my board is like the rest, ha. I'm not particularly happy with it, but it's young yet, and I'll give it time before I decide whether or not to go back to blogging. Blogging is a solo act and I wanted to try my luck with building community. I've met a couple cool people who I talk to every day, that doesn't happen with blogs. "Why not another 'literary' site like troublewaits?" There's a literary forum on Our Common Condition, called We Are The Music Makers, it's just a place to post poems and stories and such. "Or how about a troublewaits- like site and a related chat site to help others, inspire them to put together their own defining place on the worldwide web?" Why don't you? Could you be any less supportive, Jeff? Christ. I wonder about your remoteness. Is it general, or just me? It's been hard to talk to you the last couple years. It's not like I haven't tried, and I guess I gave up. And this last six months you went missing scared me so much, I thought you could be dead, so I'm perhaps more self- protective than I would be in other circumstances. This is the most honest communication I think we've had in a long time. I have some grief regarding that and how things have turned out. I do think of you often and miss our good times. It's Sunday morning and I'm listening to Billie Holiday, it's really good. Take care, love, Robin.

Darius Smith
"FAN-FIC" TILT-A-WHIRL
Beside the whirring rooftop air-conditioning machine while the sun sank prettily in a polluted Christmas Day Sky, 4 p.m. Shannen had arrived an hour early smoking half a pack of Marlboro Light cigarettes while she waited.

When she saw Molly emerge from the rooftop exit door she beamed, beautiful (Shannen's beauty almost didn't diminish when she frowned.)

Molly and Shannen were quiet a while, watching the city in the early dusk. Then, Molly turned to Shannen excitedly: "It's so obvious! Let's be superheroes!"

Shannen: "Oh yeah! Yes!"

They raced down the five flights of stairs, both ovulating, their swollen breasts adorable, splendid really under silk (Shannen!) and linen (Molly!) shirts!

Darius Smith
In the little story there are no men, no need to exert power, the next episode will feature their adventures, never having sex with anybody but deeply in love only with each other. Origin stories of superheroes sometimes feature a resolution, a will to power. These picture stars will have more fun than Spider-Man, maybe they'll solve major problems with a phonecall. The fact that they are beautiful and confident and oblivious to disappointment is a truly powerful position to begin your secret life from. It's nice that you don't have followers. I seem to follow myself around.

Robin Plan
If you want to write fanfic about sexualized women you should think about giving them agency, Jeff. Sexual agency. Re-read your piece with that in mind.

Darius Smith
Molly Ringwald and Shannen Doherty are longtime idols of mine. I confess this is my first stab at "fanfic." In your eyes I failed and offended, but to me I'm proud of how I kept my lust in check. Incidentally, YOU were a superhero in Oxford and early years in Austin. Now you mutter advice to your followers like, "Say three Hail Marys and stare at your pill bottle for an hour." Would you rather be Jim Jones or Wonder Woman? I'd rather be Wonder Woman.

Robin Plan
Bullshit, you mock and trivialize the "superhero" characterization by gratuitously sexualizing the women, and in gross biological terms (ovulating). It's simple garden variety misogyny, Jeff. Ick.
And you have a lot of nerve to lecture me about happiness. You! Jeff, um...later.

Darius Smith
It's an attempt to use the "creepy, dirty old man, voyeuristic" quality in a positive way. Sex is always on my mind since age 12 so I thought I'd be honest about it yet create a sex fantasy episode where no sex goes on, only ovulation. I'm a sexist, at least here, but really so many women WOULD be better off as superheroes. You make a fine martyr, Robin Plan, but really I wish you were happy (maybe you are and it's a secret.) Anytime I see a girl I find pretty, it throws me off my timetable, I stop, astonished. I really made an effort to keep this little story clean as possible, but of course a feminist still finds reason for offense. I love the feminists but I never expected them to love me back. Thanx for the response. Good luck in all your future endeavors.

Robin Plan
OK.. Be nicer to me and you gotta deal. Show me respect, don't be idiotic, don't belittle or come to me in more sorrow than anger and "observe" my former glory in comparison to the miserable loser I am today, in other words, don't project your bullshit onto me, do not disrespect me, period, or I will push you back. And stop wasting my time with content-free data, and of course I use the term data with more than a little irony. 

I'm at work, gotta run. Anna Nicole Smith died. Hell. Hell.

A major accomplishment: Robin Plan's TROUBLE WAITS (2002)
Fantastic essays on human rights and many difficult experiences: Robin Plan's WRITHE SAFELY (2006-09)

SPORTY SPICE IN PERIL!

"Cock Robin's Death Song" on All-Hits Radio, the sun ascending stately an invisible arc, girls in summer clothes give each other the eye, cars crash, lovers fall out of love, and all the while the price on Sporty's head sky-rockets!

The killers can't find her, they never will, and here's why: One hour she's Miss January 1962, the next she's the last-ever President of the Society for Cutting Up Men. Oh, also she never really existed. She will, though. When Sporty Spice makes the scene I and everyone will stop breathing. No, not death, That's not what I mean. I don't know what I mean. I only know that I can't wait. Hurry, Sporty! How long ecactly do you expect us to wait for what?